“Annette,” said Mrs. Lasette, “is a favorite of mine; I have always a warm place in my heart for her, and I really want to see the child do well.  In my judgment I do not think it advisable to take her from school before she graduates.  If Annette were indifferent about her lessons and showed no aptitude for improvement I should say as she does not appreciate education enough to study diligently and has not aspiration enough to keep up with her class, find out what she is best fitted for and let her be instructed in that calling for which she is best adapted.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Hanson, “you all do wrong in puffing up Annette with the idea that she is something extra.  You think, Mrs. Lasette, that there is something wonderful about Annette, but I can’t see it, and I hear a lot of people say she hasn’t got good sense.”

“They do not understand the child.”

“They all say that she is very odd and queer and often goes out into the street as if she never saw a looking glass.  Why, Mrs. Miller’s daughter just laughed till she was tired at the way Annette was dressed when she went to call on an acquaintance of hers.  Why, Annette just makes herself a perfect laughing stock.”

“Well, I think Mary Miller might have found better employment than laughing at her company.”

“Now, let me tell you, Mary Miller don’t take her for company, and that very evening Annette was at my house, just next door, and when Mary Miller went to church she never asked her to go along with her, although she belongs to the same church.”

“I am sorry to say it,” said grandmother Harcourt, “but your Alice hardly ever comes to see Annette, and never asks her to go anywhere with her, but may be in the long run Annette will come out better than some who now look down upon her.  It is a long road that has no turn and Annette is like a singed cat; she is better than she looks.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Lasette, “while Annette is very bright and intelligent as a pupil, she has been rather slow in developing in some other directions.  She lacks tact, is straightforward to bluntness and has not any style about her and little or no idea of company manners, but she is never coarse nor rude.  I never knew her to read a book whose author I would blush to name, and I never heard her engage in any conversation I would shrink to hear repeated.  I don’t think there is a girl of purer lips in A.P. than Annette, and I do not think your set, as you call it, has such a monopoly of either virtue or intelligence that you can afford to ridicule and depress any young soul who does not happen to come up to your social standard.  Where dress and style are passports Annette may be excluded, but where brain and character count Annette will gain admittance.  I fear,” said Mrs. Lasette, rising to go, “that many a young girl has gone down in the very depths who might have been saved if motherly women, when they saw them unloved and lonely, had reached out